William heney bbown



Patented Apr. 28, 1885.

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\VILLIAM HENRY BROWN, OF NEWV YORK, N. Y.

PROCESS OF MAKING SEAlVlLESS TUBES.

QPECIPICJATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 316,600, dated April28, 1885.

Application filed January 26, 1885. (No model.)

To ztZZ whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, WILLIAM HENRY BROWN, a citizen of the United States,residing in the city and county of New York, and State of New York,haveinvented a new and useful Improvement in the Manufacture of SeamlessSteel Cylinders, of which the following is a specification, referencebeing had to the accompanying drawings, forming part of thisspecification.

The invention relates to the manufacture of seamless cylinders ofsteel,either open throughout, as tubes, or closed at one end to constitutevessels orreceptacles or parts thereof.

In the manufacture of drawn steel cylinders and tubes from disks ofsteel, as heretofore practiced, the entire process has been performed atvery great expense while the metal has been in a cold state. Thisprocess is expensive,owing to the enormous power required for workingthe metal while cold in the earlier of the numerous successive drawingoperations required when the thickness of the metal is great and thecaliber of cylindrical cup-formed body under operation is large.

The object of this invention is to reducethe cost of the manufacture ofseamless steel tubes, especially those of large size, and of themanufacture of seamless steel cylindrical vessels; and to this end theinvention consists in performing the manufacture partly while the steelis hot and partly while the steel is cold-that is to say, performing theearlier stages of the manufacture, by which the disk is brought to thecylindrical form,while the steel is hot, and performing the latterstages,by which the steel is compressed, condensed, consolidated, andtempered,while it is in a cold state. The successive stages throughwhich the steel passes in its conversion from the disk form to thecylindrical may be to a considerable extent varied without departingfrom my invention; but I. have in the accompanying drawings illustrateda series of operations by which the conversion may be successivelyeffected.

Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 illustrate the changes of profile form which thedisk of steel passes through while subjected to the folding operationsin the hot state to be changed into acylinder, the said viewsrepresenting axial sec tions. Figs. 6, 7, 8 are axial sectional viewsillustrating the means employed to effect the successive changes ofform.

Similar letters of reference indicate corresponding parts in the severalfigures.

The flat steel disk,Fig. 1, is heated,andl while hot has its margin a returned up all round, as shown in Fig. 2, by any well-known or suitablemeans-as by an ordinary flanging-machineand during the same heat, orafter reheating, the flanged disk is placedin a mortar-like die, B, (seeFig. 6,) to be therein subjected to the operation of a mandrel orplunger, 0, by the direct forward movement of which toward the bottom ofsaid die it is brought to the hemispheroidal cuplike form shownin Fig.3. The cup-like piece is again heated andthen placed in a die, D, ofconical form, as shown in Fig. 7, to be therein subjected to theoperation of the conical plunger E, which conforms to said die, and bythe direct longitudinal movement of which the cup-like piece is broughtto the conical cup form shown in Fig. 4. The conical cup-like piece isagain heated, and while hot is forced through a die, F, by alongitudinally-moving mandrel or plunger, G, such as is shown in Fig. 8.p

In all of the above operations the action to which the steelis subjectedwhile hot is mainly that of folding, and this action may be repeated byas many operations as may be desirable between mandrels and dies of anysuitable form or construction, and after the seamless piece has beenbrought to a cylindrical form, and as nearly as desirable to the caliberand thickness required, it may be cleaned by suitable means to removethe scale, and then subjected as many times as desirable, in a coldstate, to a drawing action between a die and a triblet or mandrel in themanner commonly practiced in cold-drawing metal tubes and cylindricalarticles, for the purpose of compressing, condensing, consolidating, andtempering the steel and giving a smooth surface toitsinterior andexterior.

I have not represented the dies or mandrels and triblets for thecold-drawing, as'they are such as are commonly used inthe manufacture ofdrawn cylinders and tubes.

If tubes are to be formed, the closed end left I in the cylinder informing it from the disk may be cut off at the termination of thehot-folding operations and before the cold-drawingbperations, or afterthe first cold-drawing.

The operation of cold-drawing will be facilirated by tinning either theexterior orinterior surface of the cylinder, or both of said surfaces.

The tin will serve as a lubricant, and will also aid in giving a finefinish.

In this process of forming seamless steel cylinders the advantageconsists in that the metal is subjected to the folding operationsnecessary to change its form from the disk to the cylinder whilein thatconditionviz., hot-in which it can be best folded but not Well drawn,and is subjected to the drawing operation to condense, solidify, temper,and smooth it in the conditionviz., coldin which it can be best drawn,and in which condition only, in fact, it can be drawn, but in which itcannot be so Well folded.

WVhat I claim as my invention, and desire to secure by Letters Patent,is

The process of manufacturing drawn seamless cylinders of steel fromdisks by subjecting 20 the metal in a hot state during the earlierstages of the process to the folding operations scribed.

WM. HENRY BROWN. \Vitnesses:

JOHN M. TIERNEY," W. RASQUIN, Jr.

